


Cookin' Up Trouble

by gayrell



Category: Fire Emblem: If | Fire Emblem: Fates
Genre: Cooking, Gen, Leo and Takumi are idiots, M/M, Trans Male Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-14
Updated: 2021-01-14
Packaged: 2021-03-12 12:55:54
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,026
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28760658
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gayrell/pseuds/gayrell
Summary: When Takumi and Leo's siblings task them with cooking rice for dinner, they find themselves learning a lot more about each other than they expected.
Relationships: Leon | Leo/Takumi
Comments: 5
Kudos: 13
Collections: Fire Emblem Trans Winter Exchange 2020





	Cookin' Up Trouble

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Cy (possiblevoid)](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=Cy+%28possiblevoid%29).



“I can’t believe Sakura and Elise are making us cook the rice for dinner,” Takumi groans. 

“Let’s just get it over with,” sighs Leo, squinting at the written instructions Hinoka-- ever the dutiful older sister-- left for the two of them. Neither is particularly experienced in the kitchen, but how hard can cooking rice be? “Ugh. How is anyone supposed to read this?”

Takumi snatches the recipe from Leo. “Show me that.” Leo is right. Hinoka’s handwriting is, well… not exactly  _ royal.  _ She’d always shirked her studies for training, and it shows. Oh, well. How hard can cooking rice be? Even if the instructions are a little hard to read, he’s sure they’ll manage. 

Leo snatches the recipe back, scowling. “Do you want to begin, or not?” 

Takumi shoots him a look. “Fine. Just read it.”

“Gladly.”

Takumi refrains from shooting back, “Good,” amidst much inner struggle. He doesn’t need to have the last word this time. It’s not important enough. 

Instead, he says, “Tell me what I need to do.”

Leo raises a brow, but squints back down at the parchment in his hand. “Fetch a pot and a sieve,” he says. Takumi does, raising a brow expectantly. “Now, fill it with rice.”

“Just fill it with rice? Does it say how much?”

Leo squints down at the page. “Two.”

Takumi whips his head around to glare. “Two? Two what?”

“It just says two!” Leo growls. 

“That doesn’t make any sense! Give it to me!” Takumi, once again, snatches the recipe from Leo’s hands. Leo is right. Written in chicken scratch, underneath  _ Grab a pot and a sieve!  _ Is written only the number  _ 2 _ . Takumi groans. “Fine! Be that way!” He slaps the recipe onto the counter. Leo snatches it back up with a huff.

“ _ Must  _ you throw a fit every time something doesn’t go your way?”

“I’m  _ not  _ throwing a fit! She just always does this!” 

“Does what?”

“I don’t know! This!” He gestures wildly at their surroundings, as if that’s an answer.

Leo watches him appraisingly, but says nothing. They won't get anywhere by arguing. “Shall we figure it out on our own, then? Surely Lady Hinoka wouldn't charge us with an impossible task.”

Takumi’s jaw clenches. Leo half-expects him to punch him-- the war  _ has _ only just ended, after all, and they’ve never been on the best of terms-- at least until Takumi lets out a sigh. 

“Ugh. Fine. Let's do this.”

Takumi pours rice into the sieve until it’s full. Stares at it. Looks to Leo for guidance.

It takes Leo a moment to realize exactly what’s happening. “...rinse it in cold water,” he says, as if talking to a spooked animal. Takumi obliges, scooping some water into a ladle and pouring it over the top of the rice. The once clear water drains cloudy from the sieve. Takumi does this again, again, until the water runs clear.

“Like that?”

Leo doesn’t rightly know, but he nods anyway. “Very good.” Takumi, he’s learning, requires constant and consistent validation, or he doubts himself. It’s kind of exhausting. Takumi, for his part, looks relieved.

“Okay, what next?” Takumi looks to Leo expectantly. 

Leo checks the recipe. “Put the rice in a pot, then fill it with water.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it.”

Takumi peers over Leo’s shoulder once again. Leo’s telling the truth. Hinoka, once again, has failed to specify *anything*. “Is she  _ trying  _ to make us fail?”

“Maybe it doesn’t matter,” suggests Leo, shrugging. He doesn’t bother looking up from the recipe. If Takumi didn’t know any better, he’d think Leo is just as lost as he is. “Maybe it really is that simple.”

“I guess…” Takumi sulks. They sit like this a few moments before Leo notices the dejected look on Takumi’s face.

“What is it?” His voice is soft.

“I dunno. This all just seems so…  _ stupid. _ ”

“Stupid?” Leo tilts his head. “How so?”

Takumi gestures again. “ _ This.  _ It’s just some stupid rice.”

Leo doesn’t quite know what Takumi means, but somehow he gets it. “I know. It feels like our families don’t trust us.”

“Right? I should be hunting right now, or something. And you should be, uh--” He doesn’t know. He suddenly realizes just how little he knows about Leo. “I don’t know. Cooking something better than rice, maybe.”

The faintest of smiles appears on Leo’s lips. “I don’t cook,” he says flatly.

“Oh.” Takumi thinks for a moment. A pause. “What do you do?”

“Study, mostly.”

“Study what?”

Leo’s face looks guarded. “Magic.”

“What kind?”

If Leo looks surprised, it’s because he is. He didn’t expect Takumi to even  _ realize  _ there were different fields of magic, let alone ask. Perhaps there’s nothing wrong with opening up a little. Just a little, though.

“Botany. Offensive magic. Gender magic.” He mumbles this last bit, eyes averted. 

Takumi’s eyes widen. “Gender magic? Do you, uh. Are you--”

“Trans? Yeah.” He crosses his arms. “Do you have a problem with that?”

Takumi shakes his head. “No! No, not that, I--” He glances around, swallows. Leo raises a brow. “I am too,” he murmurs.

A silence falls between them. At last, Leo speaks. “...Oh.”

Takumi keeps his eyes fixed on the ground. “Yeah.”

“Cool,” says Leo. Takumi glances up, surprised.

“Cool.”

Leo shrugs. “It’s nice to not be the only one,” he mumbles. “I guess.”

“Yeah, I-- I guess so,” Takumi agrees. They fall into silence again, the dripping of the water from Takumi’s sieve the only sound between them. 

“I mean it,” says Leo. “I know you hate me, but--”

Takumi shakes his head. “I don’t hate you.”

“Oh.”

Another bout of silence. Takumi is the first to speak this time. “Should we get back to cooking the rice?” 

Leo nods. “Good idea.” 

There’s less charge in the air between them now. 

The rice, by the time they’re through with it, is a soupy mixture of singed rice grains and water. They stare at it in disbelief.

“What? We did everything the recipe told us to!” Takumi exclaims.

Leo raises his brows. “That’s not saying much.”

Takumi turns to him with an almost offended expression, and then he laughs.

Leo laughs, too.

**Author's Note:**

> It's me again, back to my Leokumi roots and here with another cooking fic. I'd like to thank my friends Pearly and Marian for the love and support while writing this, and Willow for the title (I'm not good at coming up with titles, so this was a bigger help than it sounds).
> 
> As for this fic! I wrote this for the Fire Emblem Trans Winter Exchange, and was VERY excited to get to write these two again. As someone who's just starting T myself after 3 years of consideration, it's nice to get to write characters who can just snap their fingers and trans their genders as they see fit. But enough about me! 
> 
> Happy holidays, Cy, and sorry for getting so wrapped up in FFXIV that I'm a teensy bit late with your gift. I hope you had (and continue to have) a good one.


End file.
